By Quinn Smalley
Previously, we discussed what happens when we subscribe to streaming services. We end up discreetly spending hundreds of dollars each year to access just a handful of shows we want to watch. More importantly, we forfeit our ability to own our media.
It may not sound important to own a few of your favorite movies or shows, especially in an age of convenience and minimalism. Physical media takes up space and can be inconvenient having to get up and change the disc when you’re ready for the next bit of entertainment. But with that convenience, you needlessly open your wallet and sacrifice the all-too-important right of ownership and control. What if I told you that you could have the convenience we crave and maintain control over your media library?
Having a DVD or Blu-ray player can be the first and final stop in the journey to reclaiming media ownership, but it doesn’t have to end there. You can actually build your own personal streaming service, a home media server. This allows you to enjoy the convenience of streaming without subscription fees or sudden, unexplained delisting of your favorite content. The setup is simple, though can be time-consuming. Once the server is running, using it is easy, and with free tools like Infuse and Jellyfin, your content is displayed with the same elegance as any major streamer.
Thanks to many capable and generous people on the internet, apps like Jellyfin and Plex provide an easy and free way to host your own server and consume your media. Jellyfin is a server client that detects any media in a folder you designate on your computer and creates a local server on your own Wi-Fi network. It does not use the internet to relay your content; it simply routes the data from your computer to your router to your device. So if your internet service provider limits your monthly bandwidth, rest easy, your bandwidth is untouched when streaming your own content though this method.
Another benefit is that Jellyfin can detect what movie or TV show is in your folder and update the file’s metadata so that it matches sources like IMDb. This lets Jellyfin intelligently group TV seasons together under one series page, make the content searchable by actor names or episode titles, and attach thumbnails to improve the overall aesthetic of your server. Jellyfin isn’t the only competent server option. Plex, Dim, Kodi and Emby all operate on similar principles. If you’re familiar with organizing an iTunes library on a computer, Jellyfin or any of the others will be easy to handle.
To view the content on your TV, you need an app that can connect to other devices on the same local network (your Wi-Fi signal or a wired connection). There are several simple, free options including Jellyfin’s app, VLC and Plex (if Plex is also your server) on the Google Play Store. Roku supports Jellyfin and Plex, and you can cast to it directly from your computer. On Apple TV and iOS, all of the above options are available, including Infuse, one of the most capable apps.
Now that you know how to stream your library, you’ll need to get that library onto your computer. This would have been simple and obvious in 2008, but since about 2016, computers rarely come with disc drives, most people reading this will need to buy an external drive. Depending on the formats in your library, you’ll need to decide whether to buy a Blu-ray drive or a DVD drive.
DVD drives cannot read Blu-ray discs. If your library is mostly DVDs and you’re not interested in ripping (saving a backup of) Blu-rays, then a DVD drive is fine. You can get a decent generic external DVD drive for under $30, but if you want something tested and reliable, choose a Verbatim-branded drive.
If you value higher fidelity and want to rip Blu-rays, I recommend this Blu-ray drive from LG. If you plan to rip 4K UHD Blu-rays but don’t want to overspend, this well reviewed budget model.
Once you have your drive, you just need software to rip your media. Free programs like HandBrake and MakeMKV make it easy to create one-to-one copies of your discs. This saves the content you own onto your computer and preserves image quality, guaranteeing a higher-quality viewing experience compared with streaming over the internet.
The software makes it easy to alter or remove extra audio tracks, subtitles, trailers and bonus features. This is especially helpful because media takes up a lot of storage. An average 90-minute movie on DVD takes about four to five GB; the same movie on Blu-ray can take around 30 GB. That fills up a terabyte faster than you’d think, and removing content you don’t need helps reduce storage bloat.
More storage equals more content, consider buying external storage to offload your collection from your computer. You can easily direct Jellyfin to look for content on your external drive. Don’t overthink it and buy an overpriced solid-state drive; you just need space. Mechanical hard drives are much cheaper and hold far more data. You can get an eight TB HDD for under $200. For the same amount of storage in an SSD, you can expect to pay around $600.
I personally took the plunge and started ripping my collection of movies and anime, many of which aren’t available on streaming services. Sure, I could have gotten up from the couch, walked to the shelves, grabbed the discs and watched them on my PlayStation 5. But having them at my fingertips through my home media server encouraged me to rediscover my library. Even if you don’t end up backing up your library for personal streaming, I hope you rediscover some of your favorite programs through physical media.
Video created and uploaded by Quinn Smalley on Youtube.